Archer Art Gallery at India Art Fair, January 2012

by Manan Relia 17. February 2012 14:33

A few pictures of our gallery at the 4th Edition of India Art Fair, 24-29th January 2012, New Delhi.

This was the 3rd time we had participated and thanks to all of your support we had an overwhelming response at the fair.

Anuj Ambalal | Soliloquists

by Manan Relia 14. February 2012 20:45

'Ruins at the ancient city of Gour formerly on the banks of river Ganges'
- Aquatint, Thomas Daniell, Late 18th c.

The genesis of this series lies with my exposure, as an eight year old, to the image of an 18th century etching by Thomas Daniell. The subject in question is an aquatint depicting ruins of Gour, the ancient capital of Bengal, India. The scene delineates a dilapidated structure in midst of overgrowth. The inanimate background is juxtaposed against an antithetic foreground depicting tall grass, swaying in wind, perhaps, and a sinister wild pig visible in it. The background shows hints of two static human figures.

This image has strong overtures of solitude, almost melancholia about it. And as a child, I remember being mesmerized by it (I still do) not because of its intrinsic imagery, but rather, by its ability to initiate an unspoken and possibly an unintended narrative through a surprisingly inert & a frozen composition.

Soliloquists is a series that probes this aspect in photography. Inherently, photography strives to capture & freeze subjects in a frame, often swaddling them into an infinite hibernation. This series strives to map such salient, immanent narratives of seemingly insentient subjects only to inscribe them into a flat, uni-dimensional space to document their soliloquy.